The Paradox of Plastic Bag Legislation: How Bans and Taxes Affect PM2.5 Air Pollution in 208 Countries

The dataset is grounded in the context of examining the environmental impacts of plastic bag regulations on air quality. The widespread use of plastic bags has been identified as a contributor to elevated air pollution levels globally, leading to the implementation of bans and taxes to mitigate plastic pollution. This study analyses the effects of these regulatory measures on PM2.5 air quality across 208 countries from 1960 to 2021, using Fixed Effects, Driscoll and Kraay, and GMM models. The findings reveal that while bans reduce PM2.5 exposure above certain WHO thresholds, they may increase exposure above others, and taxes consistently increase exposure across all thresholds. The dataset combines World Bank data on PM2.5 and relevant covariates with country-specific regulatory information from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_bag_ban). It includes a Stata file with the compiled dataset, a Stata do-file for analysis, and R scripts for visualisations, offering a resource to explore the nuanced relationship between plastic bag policies and air quality.

该数据集立足于审视塑料袋法规对空气质量环境影响的研究背景。全球范围内，塑料袋的广泛使用已被确认为导致空气污染水平上升的因素之一，进而促使各国实施禁令和征税措施以减轻塑料污染。本研究通过固定效应、Driscoll和Kraay以及GMM模型，分析了自1960年至2021年期间，针对208个国家的PM2.5空气质量影响，评估了这些监管措施的效果。研究发现，尽管禁令在降低PM2.5暴露量超出世界卫生组织特定阈值方面有所成效，但可能对其他阈值造成更高的暴露，而征税措施则持续性地增加所有阈值下的暴露量。该数据集融合了世界银行关于PM2.5及相关协变量的数据，以及来自维基百科（https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_bag_ban）的各国特定法规信息。它包含了一个Stata文件，其中包含了整理好的数据集，一个用于分析的Stata do文件，以及用于可视化的R脚本，为探究塑料袋政策与空气质量之间复杂关系的资源。